Louis Gossett Jr., a longtime acting fixture and the first Black man to win Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars, has died. He was 87. Gossett is best known for his roles in An Officer and a Gentleman, which earned him his Academy Award, Roots, which earned him an Emmy award, and a bevy of other notable roles on both stage and screen.
He started out acting in Brooklyn with his first acting credit in high school with You Can’t Take It With You. He joined the production after an injury knocked him from the basketball team. He would follow with his Broadway debut in 1953 at the age of 16.
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He attended NYU on a basketball and drama scholarship, acting and singing on television shows while studying acting alongside the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Martin Landau and Steve McQueen. He would also soon star on Broadway, replacing Billy Daniels in Golden Boy with Sammy Davis Jr. His first taste of Hollywood would come in 1961 for the film version of A Raisin in the Sun.
His later returns to Hollywood would be much more fulfilling, making guest appearances on shows like Bonanza, The Rockford Files, The Mod Squad, and The Partridge Family. The latter would feature Richard Pryor, according to the AP. This period also saw Gossett have a close call with the Manson Family and the Sharon Tate murders.
“There had to be a reason for my escaping this bullet,” Gossett wrote in his memoir. He had gone home after receiving an invite to Sharon Tate’s home, getting ready to leave after a shower before seeing news about Tate’s murder on television.
His Oscar and Emmys wins acted as a bit of a compliment to a long successful career, “a reverse Cinderella story,” according to the AP. “More than anything, it was a huge affirmation of my position as a Black actor,” he said in his memoir, adding later in Dave Karger’s 2024 book, 50 Oscars Nights. “The Oscar gave me the ability of being able to choose good parts in movies like Enemy Mine, Sadat and Iron Eagle.”
